I think I'm right at the character limit today. And it turns out I'm just over, so I'm going to break this into two posts -- sorry. I had intended to do a bit more with the title, but it turned out that while William is deathly pale at the moment, the conversation they have over his body was more interesting :)
Pale “We’re saving him because we’re the good guys, right?” Collins had his hand pressed over the wound on William’s arm, who was solidly unconscious and as pale as milk, and now leaning against the wall next to Adams. The wound didn’t seem large, but the blood wasn’t clotting and so it kept welling up redly between Collins’s fingers. Ethel had torn William’s shirt into strips and now nudged Collins’s hands out of the way so he could start binding. “Depends,” he said. When Collins stayed silent he glanced at him and saw the confusion on his face. “On who tells the story afterwards,” he clarified. Collins still looked perplexed. “If it’s told by someone who approves of us and our actions, we’ll be the good guys,” he said. “But say a Radiant priest tells this story. Then it’s a story of a group of hunters authorised by a fascist regime to hunt down noble devotees who are just trying to bring Light back to the world. Chances are we won’t get praised for saving William’s life, if we do, but we’ll be described as keeping him alive for our own nefarious ends. Say, to trick Tony into a trap so we can take him alive and then torture him, with government-sanctioned torture devices and a thin veneer of pseudo-legality naturally, into revealing where the rest of them are hiding so that we can break their virtuous rebellion and their efforts to save the world.” Collins was silent, thinking about this, while Ethel tied off the bandages and then started on a second layer. He criss-crossed the bandages oddly as he did so, and muttered soft words beneath his breath, but Collins was still thinking. Finally, as Ethel tied off the last knot, Collins spoke again. “That’s a bit bleak.” “Read the Bible sometime,” said Ethel. “But learn about the socio-political setting for most of it first. The stories in there take on a different tone when you understand which side of history they’re illuminating. Where’d Harold go, by the way?”
“On a recce,” said Collins. “He’s looking for Tony.” “He’s got ants in his pants,” said Ethel. “Do you kids still use that phrase? Never mind, I guess we’re stuck here then until he gets back; we can’t go dragging these two down that tunnel if Tony’s coming up the other way, and I don’t want to go back into the Light. Especially since I don’t know what happened up there. “Me neither,” said Collins. “Well, that makes three of us then,” said another voice, and Tony stood up from behind the mouldering cardboard boxes left on the shelves. He walked down an aisle a little stiffly, and Collins noticed that he was wearing robes now; a yellow and crimson sleeved robe with a peaked hood that was pushed back off his head. The robes were heavily embroidered and must have weighed a kilogram or more and probably accounted for Tony’s sloth. “William figured that when you saw him you’d stop here and relax a bit, though I don’t think he thought you’d bandage him up. Lucky for us we’d put the Robes down here so we didn’t have to keep going back and forth through the tunnel.” “Because you’d have to keep remembering to ward against your traps,” said Ethel. “That makes sense, you’d put some real effort into them.” “So what did you do exactly? Because the world should be full of Light right now, and it seems a bit gloomy down here to me.” Ethel looked at Collins. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, his heart pounding in his chest. He reminded himself he was being truthful; he knew what they’d done, but not what had actually happened. “Ethel let us out of the room and we came down here. The bats started flying around and then we found Adams, and then William and… now we’ve found you.” “I’ve found you, I think,” said Tony. He produced a gun from somewhere in the sleeve of his robe. “Just to remind you that there’s to be no funny business please. Want to try again with what happened up there? What you did?” “I don’t know what happened,” said Collins, hearing his voice squeak and wobble a little. The gun frightened him. “We came down here. You can go up and see for yourself.” Tony laughed, a short, harsh bark of amusement. “Oh yes, and leave you down here to run off? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Oh, I think we will go upstairs, you and me, Mr. Policeman, and then you can fix what you broke and everything will be all Light and wonderful again.”
Greg - Tony seems... well, dedicated seems like an appropriate description. Also it seems apparent that Ethel has put a lot of thought into perspectives and differing points of view. And while I can definitely feel the end approaching now, I still have no idea what that end will look like.
3 comments:
I think I'm right at the character limit today. And it turns out I'm just over, so I'm going to break this into two posts -- sorry. I had intended to do a bit more with the title, but it turned out that while William is deathly pale at the moment, the conversation they have over his body was more interesting :)
Pale
“We’re saving him because we’re the good guys, right?” Collins had his hand pressed over the wound on William’s arm, who was solidly unconscious and as pale as milk, and now leaning against the wall next to Adams. The wound didn’t seem large, but the blood wasn’t clotting and so it kept welling up redly between Collins’s fingers. Ethel had torn William’s shirt into strips and now nudged Collins’s hands out of the way so he could start binding.
“Depends,” he said. When Collins stayed silent he glanced at him and saw the confusion on his face. “On who tells the story afterwards,” he clarified. Collins still looked perplexed. “If it’s told by someone who approves of us and our actions, we’ll be the good guys,” he said. “But say a Radiant priest tells this story. Then it’s a story of a group of hunters authorised by a fascist regime to hunt down noble devotees who are just trying to bring Light back to the world. Chances are we won’t get praised for saving William’s life, if we do, but we’ll be described as keeping him alive for our own nefarious ends. Say, to trick Tony into a trap so we can take him alive and then torture him, with government-sanctioned torture devices and a thin veneer of pseudo-legality naturally, into revealing where the rest of them are hiding so that we can break their virtuous rebellion and their efforts to save the world.”
Collins was silent, thinking about this, while Ethel tied off the bandages and then started on a second layer. He criss-crossed the bandages oddly as he did so, and muttered soft words beneath his breath, but Collins was still thinking. Finally, as Ethel tied off the last knot, Collins spoke again.
“That’s a bit bleak.”
“Read the Bible sometime,” said Ethel. “But learn about the socio-political setting for most of it first. The stories in there take on a different tone when you understand which side of history they’re illuminating. Where’d Harold go, by the way?”
“On a recce,” said Collins. “He’s looking for Tony.”
“He’s got ants in his pants,” said Ethel. “Do you kids still use that phrase? Never mind, I guess we’re stuck here then until he gets back; we can’t go dragging these two down that tunnel if Tony’s coming up the other way, and I don’t want to go back into the Light. Especially since I don’t know what happened up there.
“Me neither,” said Collins.
“Well, that makes three of us then,” said another voice, and Tony stood up from behind the mouldering cardboard boxes left on the shelves. He walked down an aisle a little stiffly, and Collins noticed that he was wearing robes now; a yellow and crimson sleeved robe with a peaked hood that was pushed back off his head. The robes were heavily embroidered and must have weighed a kilogram or more and probably accounted for Tony’s sloth. “William figured that when you saw him you’d stop here and relax a bit, though I don’t think he thought you’d bandage him up. Lucky for us we’d put the Robes down here so we didn’t have to keep going back and forth through the tunnel.”
“Because you’d have to keep remembering to ward against your traps,” said Ethel. “That makes sense, you’d put some real effort into them.”
“So what did you do exactly? Because the world should be full of Light right now, and it seems a bit gloomy down here to me.”
Ethel looked at Collins. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, his heart pounding in his chest. He reminded himself he was being truthful; he knew what they’d done, but not what had actually happened. “Ethel let us out of the room and we came down here. The bats started flying around and then we found Adams, and then William and… now we’ve found you.”
“I’ve found you, I think,” said Tony. He produced a gun from somewhere in the sleeve of his robe. “Just to remind you that there’s to be no funny business please. Want to try again with what happened up there? What you did?”
“I don’t know what happened,” said Collins, hearing his voice squeak and wobble a little. The gun frightened him. “We came down here. You can go up and see for yourself.”
Tony laughed, a short, harsh bark of amusement. “Oh yes, and leave you down here to run off? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Oh, I think we will go upstairs, you and me, Mr. Policeman, and then you can fix what you broke and everything will be all Light and wonderful again.”
Greg - Tony seems... well, dedicated seems like an appropriate description. Also it seems apparent that Ethel has put a lot of thought into perspectives and differing points of view. And while I can definitely feel the end approaching now, I still have no idea what that end will look like.
But I am eager to find out :)
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